Progress Report: The First Month of Kelby Training’s Online Subscription Service

Starting From Scratch: Any time you launch something new like this, you hold your breath. You just do, because no matter how many estimates you’ve compiled, or projections you’ve made, and bandwidth you’ve alloted; and meticulous plans you’ve laid; you just don’t know until you launch.

In our best case scenario, if everything came together just right, we were hoping to have 300 subscribers at the end of our first month. If we somehow hit 500 subscribers by month’s end, it would have been nothing short of an absolute grand slam home run. Here’s what we hadn’t counted on; More than 2,200 subscribers!!!! We are just floored!

The word of mouth from our students has just been incredible, and I’ve been getting email after email from our students raving about their experience, and how over the top they are about this amazing faculty of instructors (I can’t tell you how gratifying it is to hear your stories; how it’s helping you in your careers, and in your passion for creating great images).

This incredible jump start has helped us to move further ahead on a variety of new training projects, and thanks to your response we’ll be announcing a number of new world-class instructors who’ll be joining our faculty, and bringing their talents to you in just the next few months (this has me totally psyched!).

Here’s what we learned: We wanted this to be a totally immersive learning experience, so our classes are delivered in a large-size, wide-screen video format, and as you might expect—it was just days before we needed to add more servers. Fast! We did, and we’ve heard from many of you that it’s made a big difference, and we’re continuing to enhance and improve the entire delivery process

Although we still have a hiccup here and there, each day they get less and less frequent as we tweak the loads, delivery methods, and bandwidth. It’s a learning process, and we’re learning quickly what works and what doesn’t, so every day the whole experience gets even better.

New Classes Online Since our initial launch just over a month ago, we’ve been adding a steady stream of new classes, including new online courses from Moose Peterson, Joe McNally, Dan Margulis, Andy Greenwell, and Dave Cross, plus a lot more are on the way (Our next new class goes live tomorrow as we bring gifted artist and instructor John Paul Caponigro’s first new class with us online).

What’s Up Next: We have a number of classes that are already well into production, from teachers like Vincent Versace, Eddie Tapp, David Ziser, more Joe McNally on location shoots, my new Photoshop Portrait Retouching Techniques class, Katrin Eismann, Rich Harrington, and lots more coming in just the next few weeks! That’s one of the things I’m most excited about; it’s not just about what we have now; it’s about the new classes being added all month long, and all year long.

We Hear Ya We’ve also been listening to your ideas and suggestions, and we’ve heard from a number of subscribers who have already noticed that new features and enhancements they requested are already being put into place (keep those ideas, and class suggestions coming—we love ’em!).

The Bottom Line We just couldn’t be more excited, delighted, and totally focused on this new 24-hour a day teaching opportunity, that is already reaching new students around the world . It’s been an amazing month; one in which we’ve learned a lot, tweaked and enhanced a lot, and both gritted our teeth and jumped for joy, but at the end of the day; it’s just a start. It’s what we do from here on out that will make the difference, and we’re totally committed to bringing you nothing but the best training, from nothing but the best educators on the planet. Period!

That’s why we’re still tweaking, improving, analyzing, adding, and most importantly; listening. Thanks for putting your trust in us, and the amazing team of dedicated educators we’ve assembled. I just can’t wait until you see what we have coming next. I think you’re absolutely going to love it!!! :-)

About The Author

Scott is the President of KelbyOne, an online educational community for Photographers, Photoshop and Lightroom users. He's editor and publisher of Photoshop User Magazine, Conference Technical Chair for the Photoshop World Conference & Expo, and the author of a string of bestselling Photoshop, Lightroom, and photography books.

About Me

Scott is the President of KelbyOne, an online educational community for Photographers, Photoshop and Lightroom users. He's editor and publisher of Photoshop User Magazine, Conference Technical Chair for the Photoshop World Conference & Expo, and the author of a string of bestselling Photoshop, Lightroom, and photography books.